Untitled Self Portrait by Francesca Woodman

“The four personalties at the center of “The Woodmans” are ceramic sculptor Betty Woodman, her painter and photographer husband George, their video- and performance-artist son Charles, and the most renowned member of the creative clan, photographer Francesca Woodman. It is Francesca’s brief and ultimately tragic life—which ended in 1981 when she leapt from the window of her New York apartment at age 22—that offers the darkest part of the films trenchant, emotionally detailed family tapestry.

But “The Woodmans” is considerably more than an exhumation of a lost creative soul. “There’s a temptation to make a film just about Francesca,” Mr. Willis said. “But if you really think about it, that would be a short, sad film. I wanted to tell a family story and not sort of let it drift into the Gothic tale, which Francesca’s life sometimes is seen as. I consider myself a journalist. For me, it’s an investigative story not in the sense of uncovering scandal or corruption or something, but in the sense of being rigidly focused on finding a truth that I was comfortable with.”